Porter’s Pensées

If I had hoped to get away from Brexit by flying to Sweden, I’d have been disappointed. It has been the major item in the Swedish newspapers and TV News for days now: on the front pages many days (here is an example, from today’s Dagens Nyheter); and with reams of analysis inside. Usually the analysis is accurate and pretty fair – more so, in fact, than in the British press. The Swedes are too polite to laugh at us openly, but I’m sure they’re doing so behind their hands.

Like most Brits in Europe, I imagine, I’m feeling thoroughly demoralised, and even ashamed. I’ve asked Kajsa to be gentle with me. She’s surprised that, as someone claiming to be a cosmopolitan, I’m so sensitive to the reputation of the country I was brought up in. It will be easier when – if? – my Swedish citizenship comes through, and I can laugh with them. Apparently Migrationsverket are now fast-tracking us British refugees. Cross your fingers.

On the issue itself: it looks to me as if the much-abused Corbyn could turn out to have been right all along. After all the Mayhem, we could be in line for a ‘soft’ Brexit, and the general election the country needs. He’s a lot brighter than the public school mob takes him for. It seems that you can learn as much wisdom from an allotment as from the Greeks.

Thursday 28 March. Well, it looks as if she will be going soon, although she has an odd way of going about it: ‘back my Brexit deal or I stay’. Still, it seems inevitable. Within a few weeks, or even days, she’ll be gone. It will have been a humiliating fall. Enoch Powell once said that all political careers end in failure; but this is something else.

One wonders how she is going to feel, waking up in bed the day after her ousting, with no-one close to comfort her: no children, few friends, apparently, and only that garden-rake of a financier husband by her side; only to be told by nearly everyone that she has been ‘the worst prime minister in British history’ (Polly Toynbee in today’s Guardian), and the one who is mainly to blame (together with David Cameron) for the awful mess we’re in just now.

There may be some sympathy for her. Firstly, on the grounds that she’s a woman, and therefore – it’s assumed – a victim of the prejudice and hardship that has been the fate of all women in recent times. And secondly, on the grounds that she was ‘dealt a poor hand’.

Managing Brexit was certainly that. The expectations of the victorious Brexiteers were  always chimerical – the common word for them nowadays is ‘unicorns’ – and the Brexiteers themselves were deeply divided over what those expectations had been in any case. The ‘ultras’ of the ERG (European Research Group) were especially assertive and uncompromising, demanding the severing of all the ties that formally bound Britain to the Continent, so that they could float the country off to become either a profitable off-shore tax haven (Rees-Mogg), or else to start building a great new empire of the kind Boris Johnson had been taught about, we presume, at Eton.

The ‘woman’ thing, however, doesn’t work. Her gender doesn’t seem to have particularly disadvantaged her career-wise, in the wake of Thatcher; and the only way I can think of that it might have affected her – as it did with Thatcher – was in encouraging her to become less conventionally feminine – ‘grow some balls’ – in order to be able to compete with the dominant males in her tribe. That might help explain her stint at the Home Office, where she fashioned herself into the cruellest Secretary of State in modern times. (See https://bernardjporter.com/2018/05/31/our-unhomely-office/.)

Then came her premiership: somewhat accidentally, although she had apparently hankered after it for years. That was when all her other failings came to the fore: again, none of them gender-related, but decidedly personal. She didn’t truly believe in her cause – at the time of the referendum she had supported the Remain side – which may have been one reason for her obduracy: in order to persuade the genuine Brexiteers that she really was one of them. She wouldn’t listen. She triggered Article 50 before she needed to. She called an unnecessary General Election, and lost it. She was a terrible negotiator, in just about every circumstance, foreign and domestic. By all accounts she has no social skills at all: see this recent excoriating verdict, based on personal experience, in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/opinion/theresa-may.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article. She never tried to reach out to the Europeans, or to the 48% of ‘Remainers’ at home, being mainly concerned to appease her ultras in the Conservative party. Her speeches and statements were dire: repetitive, nonsensical, ‘robotic’. (Hence her unkind nickname: the Maybot.) The public one she gave on TV about a week ago – blaming ‘Parliament’ for everything, and so further stirring the hostility to politicians that the populist press had been preparing for months – was shockingly ill-judged, and even dangerous. (Attacks on MPs peaked afterwards.) She lacked imagination, depth and empathy; even, I would say, intelligence, beyond what was required to gain her an Oxford Geography degree. OK, the premiership was a poisoned chalice; but others could undoubtedly have done better with it, and she still deserves much of the blame for taking on a job she should have known she was unfitted for. It was a clear case of nemesis following hubris. Serve her right.

Whether the tragedy of the last few days – and years – can be adequately explained in terms of her personal failings, however, is highly doubtful. Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian avers that May’s mishandling of Brexit ‘is a reminder of the extent to which individuals matter in history’, but then goes on list some of the other more impersonal and important factors lurking behind. I hope to come back to these in a later post.

For the present, this one is being written in a plane (a rather bumpy one: I hope it’s not one of those Boeing 737 Max’s) taking me from the toe-curling embarrassment of the British political scene, to the altogether calmer and more rational environment of Sweden. I may not be able to post it from up here: Norwegian Air’s wi-fi is not all it’s cracked up to be; in which case I’ll send it from Sweden, after I’ve landed. (Or crashed, it it’s a Max.) Maybe tomorrow morning, after a sleep which I hope will be less troubled than Theresa’s. I’ve not helped bugger up the country, after all.

(Friday, 4 p.m. CET.) We didn’t crash, so here it is. May’s deal (or part of it) has just been defeated in the Commons at the third time of asking. So, according to the promise she made, she should be carrying on. That’s unlikely to help.

Another exciting week coming up. As a politics junkie, I have ‘Parliament’ on my TV all day. Unfortunately on Thursday, when we might see the climax – (May resigning? Her deal getting through? No deal? The sort of compromise – Corbyn’s, perhaps – she has been unable even to consider hitherto? The Brexit loonies imploding? The promise of a new referendum? Or the calling of a General Election?) – I’ll be up in the sky on my way back to Stockholm. I don’t suppose I’ll be able to get Parliament TV there.

Last night on Newsnight  Steven Baker, May’s Brexit minister, talked of the ‘danger’ of Parliament’s seizing control of Brexit from the government. But isn’t the legislature meant to control the executive? Or was all my 17^thcentury British constitutional history at university wasted on me?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been rooting for Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘Common Market Mk 2’ solution to the present impasse – that is, Britain in the single market, a bit like Norway; but only because of my natural penchant for compromise, and my anxiety about the reaction in the country if the ‘people’s will’ (so-called) is seen to be thwarted.

Of course I don’t accept May’s reading of the ‘people’s will’, either as it was in June 2016, when it was distorted by other factors (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/, plus all the revelations that have appeared since then about the gross cheating that was perpetrated on the Brexit side); or in March 2019, when demographic shifts suggest that the vote then isn’t likely to have reflected opinion now. (That is, with old Brexiters dying and being replaced by young pro-Europeans.) I’m also as much repelled by the characters and backgrounds of the current batch of leading Leavers – rich, public school-bred, shady financiers and Tory journalists – as anyone who has closely studied the likes of Farage, Boris, Govey and Moggy is bound to be. Of course this doesn’t mean that these people are necessarily wrong, and as a rational person I realise the dangers of judging an argument by the clothes of the person who is delivering it. Nonetheless, this consideration doesn’t detract from my view that this whole Brexit business is a huge ‘con’, potentially disastrous to almost every aspect of British life – not only our wealth but also our morality and dignity in the eyes of the rest of the world – and really ought to be somehow stopped in its tracks, even this far along the road, with the UK returning, tail between its legs, to the more favourable relations with Europe it has now within the EU.

I’m hoping, deep down, that this might be the outcome of the stupendously popular anti-Brexit ‘People’s Vote’ demonstration that took place yesterday in London – a million strong, they say; backed by more than five million signatories to a petition demanding the same. (Farage’s rival ‘epic march’ down from Sunderland gathered only about 70.) But the problem, still, is the effect of any such reversal on pro-Brexit opinion in the country, and the risk that it might even – as some have predicted – provoke something in the nature of a ‘civil war’. Hence my backing for Jeremy’s clever strategy.

Since yesterday’s demonstration, however, and various other events over the past week or two, I’ve changed my mind. The demo stiffened my backbone. So did the dreadful threats that have been coming from the Brexit side: to prominent Remainers who are threatened with death, torture or rape if they continue, including the woman who started the 5 million-plus petition, who is now afraid to live in her home; and to most MPs since Theresa May identified them, in that quite appalling ‘address to the nation’ the other night, as the ‘enemies of the people’ – as, of course, the gutter press has been doing all along. (See https://bernardjporter.com/2019/03/20/theresa-the-populist/.) After it, MPs were urged to take black cabs home from Parliament to avoid being way-laid. If that speech wasn’t a provocation to violence, I don’t know what is. And of course we’ve already had one young Labour MP, Jo Cox, murdered in the streets by a ‘Britain First’ enthusiast. For pity’s sake: what kind of person believes Brexit is worth killing  for?

So, as a result of all this, I’m now no longer deterred by the threat from the Brexit side. They don’t deserve pandering to. As do none of the other ‘populist’ movements in Europe and the Americas to which Brexit is clearly allied. It’s not an exaggeration to call them proto-fascist. And as our national experience between the wars should have taught us, it’s dangerous to try to appease even proto-fascism.

It’s the violence that has finally put me off the idea of compromise, or a ‘soft Brexit’; together with the Brexiteers’ lack of humour. People are fond of lazily excusing ‘excess’ on one side of an argument by claiming that it’s a characteristic of ‘both extremes’ – Trump did it notoriously after that riot in Charlottesville in August 2017; but it emphatically isn’t  so in this case. So far as I know no-one on the Remain side has threatened to murder or rape any Brexiter. Violence appears – in this context – to be an exclusively right-wing characteristic. (Why is this, I wonder?) The ‘people’s vote’ demonstration yesterday, huge as it was, seems to have been entirely peaceful. It was also good spirited and humorous. Just look at the placards, of which there’s a great selection here: https://inews.co.uk/news/brexit/brexit-march-30-funniest-placards-put-it-to-the-people-demo-london/. (As a Swedophile I’m slightly offended by the IKEA one, but I thought it was funny all the same.) You don’t find that sort of thing on the Brexit side. It seems remarkably humourless. (Unless the laughable eccentricities of its clownish leaders are supposed to compensate for this.)

This is another example, I realise, of judging an argument by its clothes, or the clothes perhaps of only a minority. And of course there are other better reasons for my backing Remain. But other things being equal – which they aren’t in this case – I hope I’d always plump for humour over violence. That’s one of the contests going on here.

This just about sums it up (from around 2 minutes on).

I’ve always especially despised those who take on positions of responsibility without having any of the necessary qualities for the job. I include myself in this category: I should have known how hopeless I would be as a Head of Department before I took the role on. I used to think that John Major was the best modern political example, until Theresa May – ‘Theresa the Hapless’, as she’s called in today’s Guardian – came along. Stiff, inflexible, narrow-minded, shallow, unimaginative and prejudiced (against immigrants): all of which I think justifies our regarding her as ‘stupid’, even if she did get an Oxford degree. And actually rather wicked to boot (as Home Secretary), despite her vicar dad. She’s not the sole or original cause of our present crisis; but my God she hasn’t helped.

And that’s emphatically not because she’s a woman. All it says is that women can be as bad as men in these situations; which ought to be a welcome sign of gender equality. (Please note, my feminist friends.)

Almost everyone, including her own MPs, thinks she should resign the leadership. The main obstacles to that are the likely replacements standing in the wings, all quivering with ambition. Would Boris, Moggy or Govey be any better? One shudders at the thought.

8.45 p.m. Theresa May has just made her (fairly) eagerly-awaited statement on Brexit to the cameras in No.10. Some people thought she was going to announce her resignation. No chance. Instead she simply reasserted the position she has held for over two years now: ‘my deal is the only one’. MPs felt insulted that she had not made the announcement to them first, in the House of Commons, according to constitutional convention. We now know why. She feels herself to be above Parliament.  It is Parliament, and in particular ‘navel-gazing MPs’, who have obstructed her all along – twice by huge majorities. She was now appealing directly to ‘the people’, because ‘I’m on your side’ – against, that is, those partisan and out-of-touch politicians. That point, about politicians not representing the ‘will of the people’, has been the argument splashed over Right-wing tabloid front-pages for months now. It is, of course, a typically ‘populist’, and even potentially fascist, line.

Before her public statement there was an ‘emergency debate’ in the Commons about the way the government – and she in particular – have been pursuing Brexit. She didn’t attend – preparing her statement, perhaps, or possibly in Brussels or Strasbourg – but was savaged in absentia from all sides. A prominent Tory said that she (May) made her ‘weep’, and ‘ashamed to be a Conservative’. Virtually no one supported her. (Mind you, the Conservative benches were largely empty.) The main and repeated complaint was that she would never listen, especially to those who criticised her ‘deal’ and offered viable alternatives (like Corbyn’s). Instead the only ‘compromise’ she would brook required her critics to agree with her.

So: it’s her, representing ‘the people’, against the politicians, or the Establishment, or the elite, or whatever you like to call them. I imagine that’s her idea of ‘leadership’. It really does chime in with history’s right-wing populists and Fascists, and also, of course, with Donald Trump. Fortunately for us, May seems to be too dull, rigid and unimaginative to make it work for her like it did for them.

Besides, Britain is essentially – if imperfectly – a Parliamentary democracy. May is Parliament’s servant, not the other way around. That’s what has kept us safe from populism and Fascism for so long. And Brexiteers claim to be defending it!

Historical precedents for current events are usually neither particularly relevant, nor helpful. Certainly there is very little in our (British) past to give much guidance on what has been widely described as the ‘national crisis’ we are in now. But there are some partial precedents.

One is the ‘Home Rule crisis’ of 1886, which could be seen as presaging some of the Labour Party splits of modern times; including the breakaway SDP in the 1970s, and then the ‘Independent Group’ (or ‘TIG’) of seven MPs who have renounced their Labour allegiance in the last couple of weeks. The ostensible issue in 1886 was Ireland, for which Gladstone was trying to legislate a (moderate) form of ‘Home Rule’. The equivalent today, I suppose, although the similarity is not that close, is the European issue, which TIG doesn’t believe the Labour leadership is firm enough on. In the ‘Home Rule’ case, however, most historians now believe that Ireland wasn’t the only or even the main issue for those who became known as the ‘Liberal Unionists’, and that Gladstone’s assaults on private property, and the spectre of ‘socialism’, were rather more powerful. (I see I’ve summarised this rather well in Britannia’s Burden, pp. 98-102.) Clearly there are other issues behind today’s defections too; of which Corbyn’s ‘socialism’ could be one.

In 1886 the Liberal defectors – or those who were left – were eventually subsumed by the Conservative Party, which changed its name to ‘Conservative and Unionist’ to take account of them. In the 1970s the SDP joined the Liberal Party, to become the ‘Liberal Democrats’. In the current case the Labour defectors have been joined in TIG by a handful of Tories. It’s impossible to say yet where they’ll all end up; but these two historical precedents can’t be encouraging for them.

But we shouldn’t make too much of this. History doesn’t repeat itself. The present crisis has much deeper roots; which I hope to explore later, when we can see where it has led.

Kajsa has started referring to my country as ‘your poor little island’. I can live with that. But I don’t imagine that patriotic Brexiteers will appreciate their proud nation’s being pitied in this way. But it’s all their fault.

The solution should be easy. The 2016 referendum vote was very close, and not reliable in any case. Two out of four of Britain’s constituent nations voted Remain. Round about half the total voting population – maybe more now – voted that way. So there ought to be a compromise.

The Norway Model, or something close to it, keeping Britain within the single market, looks the perfect one. It would meet each side halfway. There would probably be a majority in Parliament for it. It would solve the Irish border problem at a stroke.The EU would grant Britain an extension of Article 50 to negotiate it. Extreme Brexiteers won’t like it, as neither do I (a Remainer), but that’s in the nature of compromises. May won’t brook it, partly because she’s in hock to her Europhobic loonies, and partly, perhaps, because it’s Corbyn’s idea, and she couldn’t stomach that. It would also mean that she’s been wasting her time, and sorely trying the patience (and the treasure) of the country, for nearly three years. But it’s the simplest and indeed the only way out. It could be achieved by a Corbyn government; or, failing that, by the forces of reason and moderation on all sides of the House of Commons taking control and voting it through. Why the f**ck can’t they see it?

Do this, and the whole episode will still have harmed us, of course. But in a short while the world might stop feeling sorry for us, and give us back a little of the respect that our patriots used to credit us with.